Analysis of individual differences in neurofeedback training illuminates successful self-regulation of the dopaminergic midbrain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The dopaminergic midbrain is associated with reinforcement learning, motivation and decision-making - functions often disturbed in neuropsychiatric disorders. Previous research has shown that dopaminergic midbrain activity can be endogenously modulated via neurofeedback. However, the robustness of endogenous modulation, a requirement for clinical translation, is unclear. Here, we examine whether the activation of particular brain regions associates with successful regulation transfer when feedback is no longer available. Moreover, to elucidate mechanisms underlying effective self-regulation, we study the relation of successful transfer with learning (temporal difference coding) outside the midbrain during neurofeedback training and with individual reward sensitivity in a monetary incentive delay (MID) task. Fifty-nine participants underwent neurofeedback training either in standard (Study 1 N = 15, Study 2 N = 28) or control feedback group (Study 1, N = 16). We find that successful self-regulation is associated with prefrontal reward sensitivity in the MID task (N = 25), with a decreasing relation between prefrontal activity and midbrain learning signals during neurofeedback training and with increased activity within cognitive control areas during transfer. The association between midbrain self-regulation and prefrontal temporal difference and reward sensitivity suggests that reinforcement learning contributes to successful self-regulation. Our findings provide insights in the control of midbrain activity and may facilitate individually tailoring neurofeedback training.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".